Universalism versus tribalism

The most venerable Warakagoda Sri
Gnanarathana thero Mahanayake of the Asgiriya chapter
has announced that his recent remarks,
have been misconstrued and distorted.

The authenticity of recorded information in cyberspace is an inconvenient truth of the age we live in. For those curious, the original ‘Anusasana’ and the subsequent clarification are both available in the internet.

We must take refuge in the Dhammapada. As rain makes its way into a badly roofed house, so passion makes its way into an unreflecting mind. As rain does not make its way into a well-roofed house, so passion does not make its way into a reflecting mind.

With a presidential election around the corner, these are times for deep reflection.

Rabindranath Tagore

Bring to this country once again the blessed name

Which made the
land of thy birth sacred to all distant lands! Let thy great awakening under
the Bodhi-tree be fulfilled. Sweeping away the veil of unreason and let, at the
end of an oblivious night,

Freshly blossom out in India thy remembrance!

All creatures
are crying for a new birth of thine.

Oh, thou of
boundless life,

save them,
rouse thine eternal voice of hope.

Let love’s
lotus with its inexhaustible treasure of honey

open its petals
in thy light.

O Serene, O
Free

in thine
immeasurable mercy and goodness

wipe away all dark stains from the heart of this
earth.

In 1931, Rabindranath Tagore wrote these verses capturing the sublime quintessence of the great awakening of the Buddha to mark the consecration of the new Mulagandha Kuti Viharaya at Saranath where the Buddha preached his first sermon. Tagore was not merely celebrating the message of the Buddha. He was also crying for a new birth of the Buddha as the eternal voice of hope.

We have again reached such a point when we desperately
need the Buddha to guide us.

Tagore’s
poetry capturing the quintessence of the Buddha “O Serene, O
Free, in thine immeasurable mercy and goodness, wipe away all dark stains from
the heart of this earth” is an eloquent rebuke of the stain
produced by the ecclesiastical exercise on the feasibility of stoning
people.

In 2014, Amartya Sen the Nobel Laureate in economics published an
essay on the relevance of Buddhism in the 21st Century. He reminds
us that Rabindranath Tagore
once remarked that he was extremely sad that he was not alive when Gautama
Buddha was still around.

“Tagore very much
wished he could have had conversations with Buddha. I share that sentiment,
but, like Rabindranath, I am also immensely grateful that, even now, we can
enjoy – and learn from – the ideas and arguments that Buddha gave us
twenty-five hundred years ago. Our world may be very different from what Buddha
faced in the sixth century BC , but we can still benefit greatly from the
reasoned approach to ethics, politics, and social relations that Gautama Buddha
brought to the world of human understanding.

I have cited
Rabindranath Tagore and Professor Amartya Sen for a specific reason. Both offer
living proof that the oriental mind is a fertile field for knowledge and reason
. That it was so, long before what we now know as the European Reformation and
Enlightenment.

The point is
significant. Individual human rights is not a western imperialist conspiracy
but an implicit component of authentic Buddhist teaching. It is a point that should be driven home with great
urgency . In the context of Gotabaya
Rajapakse running for the presidency, it
is an existential imperative for us who cherish freedom. That the Sinhala
language has no precise equivalents for liberty and freedom is a sad commentary
of our present dilemma.

A Gotabaya Rajapakse
candidacy should be welcomed. His quest for a majority of the majority presents
us with a clear choice: universalist
humanism or insular tribalism.

Even a passing reference to a barbaric tribal practice should stir the
conscience of anyone who claims an iota of familiarity with what the Buddha taught.

Cocooned in privilege and power, the
institutional Buddhist monastic orders are distanced from the objective of
being beacons of humility, kindness and compassion.

We are still riddled with the suffering of
humanity. Its causes persist today just as they did in the time of the
master.

We have arrived at a
fork. Where do we go? Should we remain
trapped in tribal prejudice or embrace universal knowledge?. Tribalism is the
comfortable cosy pattern that looks inward to ethnicity and religious
conformity. The people who define themselves in such terms always
perceive themselves in opposition to
other groups. They are confined to values,
beliefs and orientations of their tradition. That was the essence of the
controversy .

People who aspire towards
a universal community regard themselves as part of a larger world that transcends
the regional or tribal framework , they were born in to.

While the universalists see
themselves through a universal framework, they also retain their individuality . While
subscribing to universal norms, they remain firmly grounded in their sense of
individual identity .

The stark contrast
between the tribal and universal world view is demonstrated in their attitude
towards authority.

For the tribal group,
authority is something that comes from the tribal chief. The authority is
either attached to a lineage such as the family that won a humanitarian war or
more abstractly, from the tradition or dogma of the tribal unit.

For universalists such as
this writer , authority is defined in terms of reality that needs to be shaped
, altered or accepted. The universalists
insist on their right to know and interpret reality individually, and
not as received, collected wisdom offered by self-styled experts and
professionals of the ‘Viyathmaga’ type.

The internet and
evolving digital technology compels us
to see ourselves as a part of the universe. Our monastic orders
notwithstanding. Like it or not we are only a small part of the universal
puzzle. The Buddha saw it first.

The Mahanayake thero has not disclaimed
his expressed opinion on who our next president should be. Come November , we
will come face to face with liberty . Do we say Hello or Bye Bye to liberty
?